


traces

by machibouke



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Lazy Mornings, M/M, Thinking, not in the way you're thinking though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 16:30:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7230088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machibouke/pseuds/machibouke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sho can’t remember a lot of things, but he does remember some things. Then again, he’s always had a rubbish memory, only good for dates, his raps, vocabulary, measuring time, schedule adherence, and… well, Nino.</p>
            </blockquote>





	traces

 

Sho can’t really remember the part where he fell, but maybe that was the whole point of it. Of love. The beauty of falling in love, or falling for love – falling for the person who was the object of your affections. The _not knowing_. Generally, or from what he’s heard, you’re supposed to be scared. Supposed to fear the inevitable landing that you know will be coming at some unknown point. And naturally, you’ll do everything you can do avoid it. Depending on how your threshold of fear holds up, and how you look at it. Of course, you could just trust that person and tell yourself that they won’t hurt you, and that they’ll do everything they can to not let that end come. That would probably save a relationship a whole lot of drama.

Sho looks at it like this: this time, it’s gentle and soft and thoughtful and platonic and although it’s controlled to some extent, he feels unbearably content. It is totally unexpected, along with the person he’s sharing this supposed love with, but he wants to enjoy it while he can. He trusts this person, but he doesn’t trust the set of circumstances they got themselves into with this damn industry.

Personally, he thinks there’s something to be said for lying next to someone in the morning and getting to see them internally lost in another world, all while being completely unresponsive externally. It never fails to amaze him. There’s the unbidden chance to touch them in places that aren’t usually allowed in any other circumstances – like the passive length of the spine, in Nino’s case. He’s violently adverse to the idea of it even being looked at let alone getting touched, because when it is, even with the slightest contact, he’s sent into permanent laughing fits. Or death (Nino assures that this is a credible possibility). This usually ends with Nino gaining an unhealthy distrust in everybody who has the access to any area of his body, and he sticks to walls for as long as he possibly can without looking insane or like a human embodiment of a wallflower.

It doesn’t feel right to violate that condition of their provisional relationship (one that Nino technically only agreed to so that he didn’t have to sleep alone of a night – a chronic fear of his), so Sho settles for just resting his palm over Nino’s still hand and tests it for responsiveness. Nothing. Just an augmenting warmth – the skin slowly awakening to the morning and fellow human contact. Sho moves his fingers enough so that their hands are now gripping each other, palms squeezed tightly together, and he can feel the smallest pulse pump through his chubby fingers: the only giveaway that Nino is actually there through the guise of his sleep, that he can probably feel all of this somewhere in his dreams. He extensively wonders what Nino’s dreams have twisted his small gesture into and even further thinks he’s never felt like they’ve been this cohesive up until now, and Nino isn’t even awake to see it.

Tiny little breaths escape the lips inches away from his. Sho takes note of this and, still keeping his hold on Nino’s unmoving hand, he reaches backwards with his other and feels around for his phone on the nightstand. He does this for two reasons: one, mainly to switch off the alarm he’d set on there the previous night for work purposes: he’s awake but Nino isn’t yet, and he wants it to stay that way. And two—

Nino’s face begins contorting almost painfully from his peripheral vision and Sho begins to swipe his fingers along the screen more rapidly, finding what he needed. What he was about to do wasn’t creepy at all – at least he tries to convince himself and hopes. The sound of Nino sleeping is one he wants to keep forever, or at least on his phone for as long as possible. He pushes himself gently across the sheets. He taps the button on the screen and holds it to Nino’s face. The voice recording silently begins.

 _Don’t wake up, don’t wake up, please_ , he pleads the mantra in his head.

“Morning,” Nino murmurs shortly.

Sho jerks in belated surprise, wondering if he’d been murmuring to himself out loud, or if Nino had a miraculous power to hear another’s thoughts due to such proximity, but after dismissing the stupid theory, he recovers easily. While he retrieves his phone, hastily pretending to check the time, Sho also finds it mildly fascinating and noteworthy that Nino’s body woke up even before he did.

“What were you doing?” Nino asks in his bleary, slightly nasal morning voice, squinting at the device in Sho’s hands. He’s clearly puzzled, but then reproachful. “Were you taking _nudes_ of me or something? Sho-chan. That’s creepy, even for you. I expect that from Aiba-chan, not you.”

Sho shakes his head vehemently. He spins the phone along his palm, trying to buy himself some time to come up with a reasonable excuse. But the truth habitually slides out anyway, because there’s no point in lying to Nino. “I was…recording you. Voice recording,” he adds petulantly at Nino’s wary expression. He covers it up cleanly, continuing, “You were grinding your teeth again. And you think I’m bad? I was going to finally prove it to you, with some concrete evidence this time.”

Nino just stares straight ahead silently, a perfect freeze-frame of impassiveness and a twinge of dubiety, only his parted lips giving away existence of his short surprise. “Oh, yeah? I’ll pretend like I believe that.” He makes a mental note to give Sho’s phone a once-over later on when the owner is busy, for any more “concrete evidence” he might need to clear. “Besides your own teeth-grinding, you are the one with the worst snore on this planet, _Elephant-san._ ”

“Alright, I’m sorry.” No, he is sorry for the recording part and not that he, admittedly, snores like a baby elephant. “Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah. I was having a bad dream anyway. Some serious _Godzilla_ meets _Jaws_ shit.” Sho laughs and Nino groans, angling himself restlessly into the mattress and stretching his legs expansively with a few cracks here and there. His toes brush against Sho’s and, with a widening smile, he wiggles them. “Hmm. Your toes are soft. Like marshmallows.”

“ _Just_ what I want to hear in the morning.” Nino could be an unbelievable prude and sarcastic prick on national television, but at home on a Friday morning, half-asleep and extremely vulnerable, he could be a complete sap when he wanted to be. Sho’s sarcasm is only half-hearted, and he returns his phone back to the nightstand. Nino asks if he would prefer a Japanese reference, then: “Soft like tofu?”, but Sho shakes his head. He gives back as good as he gets, remembering himself repressing the urge to stroke Nino’s back earlier on. “Your spine is soft like marshmallows, too.”

Nino yelps, half-convulsing much to Sho’s immediate amusement, and he tries in vain to hold Nino down. “You _touched_ it?!”

“ _Relax_. I’m kidding, marshmallow.”

“Ugh. Don’t _do_ that. You know I hate people touching my back. It’s sensitive.”

“Like you?” Sho jokes with harmless intentions, ducking his head anyway to avoid the incoming pillow launch that he sees coming. He thinks maybe he deserves the poisonous glare that Nino is searing into him. Like he would miss the chance for a good jab at Nino’s sensitivity though.

“All’s fair in love and war,” he says airily, flopping back down, but the words love and war grow muffled when Nino’s pillow lands with finality in his face.

Nino wants to flip him the finger after that, but he’s too tired after the pillow-bashing. He steals Sho’s pillow from under his head and collapses back on it, covering his eyes with his forearm and trying to get a few more seconds of shut-eye before Sho slips into his frigid it’s-time-to-get-ready-for-work mode.

“I get that you never like others touching you there--or anywhere, for that matter--but me too?” he can’t help imploring sulkily.

“You _especially_ ,” Nino emphasizes, but the tone is light. He sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, bending low for something on the floor. “You know too much. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Silence. Sho’s eyes trail curiously over the white field that is Nino’s back, hunched over as he reaches for his jeans and pulls them up. Sho watches the shoulder blades slot into place repeatedly, working effortlessly to accommodate Nino’s lazy movements, the spine that Nino protects with such dedication protruding and jostling closely along with them like clockwork. He could watch this all day if time (and Nino) would let him. Distantly, on a more different topic, he wonders if it’s just him who’s fallen or if Nino’s caught up in the same place too, but it’s not the most pressing matter right now. He still wants to enjoy himself some more.

For now, he has the present, and that thankfully contains Nino.

He reaches out and runs his finger down the halfway mark of Nino’s back, prodding slightly, and Nino doesn’t turn on him, flinch or openly complain. He glances sideways slowly, stiffening and arching into the touch. Progress, Sho thinks in silent joy and triumph, and massages the groove gently as the skin shivers.

Besides the present, they have a past and a future to come. To do a little more falling.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday nino! (｀∀´)
> 
> this hasn't got a specific time or year, so use your imagination. I picture them being pretty youngish though.


End file.
